Editorial: Resolve to restore jobless benefits in new year

Several Democrats said over the past weekend that they would keep up their push to extend emergency unemployment benefits in January. Here's to their success.

As we've written previously, we believe that cutting these benefits will not only be disastrous for the individuals and their families, but will slow the economic recovery at a critical time.

Although the short-term unemployment rate - which counts people out of work for six months or less - is close to its pre-crisis levels, the long-term unemployment rate remains higher than at any point since 1948.

More than 1.3 million families - more than 40,000 in Michigan - received their last unemployment checks last week. Michigan is among the 11 states with a substantially high portion of people who have been unable to find work for more than a year, and are thus unlikely to find jobs just because their benefits go away.

So far, however, House Republicans have indicated they would allow the benefits to expire. In early December, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the program was "emergency spending? emergency need," and said the best way to help people is to "get them back to work."

Cantor is either delusional or dishonest, as there is not a shred of evidence that these benefits are a disincentive to seek employment. Further, he and his fellow Republicans are hypocrites, given the deference they give to tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

The U.S. economic outlook for 2014 is tepid, at best, unless your money is in the stock market or you're in a good position to benefit from modest improvements in manufacturing, real estate and technology. Most Americans will feel about the same a year from now, if they're lucky.

Cutting benefits to the least fortunate victims of this failure of economic policy, from which by and large only the wealthiest are recovering at an acceptable pace, is cruel and unjustifiable. Preventing that cut should be the first New Year resolution the Legislature tackles in 2014.

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Editorial: Resolve to restore jobless benefits in new year

Several Democrats said over the past weekend that they would keep up their push to extend emergency unemployment benefits in January. Here's to their success.